Organizations commonly store and analyze large amounts of data. Data may be stored in a relational database. A relational database stores data in one or more tables. The data may be stored in association with data fields (also referred to as fields). As an example, a data table includes the data fields FirstName and LastName. Thousands of first names and last names may be stored in association with the data fields FirstName and LastName, respectively.
The data may be searched, filtered, and/or complied into reports. A user may formulate a query to retrieve a subset of data from the database. Formulating a query may involve selecting a set of data fields or records for use in formulating the query. The number of data fields available for selection may be very large, making the process of searching for pertinent data fields a potentially time-consuming process.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.